Seminar seeks to strengthen marriage

Some people say the first year of marriage is the hardest, and many believe marriage is always difficult.

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To help with all stages of marriage, Central Church of Christ, 3650 Old Petersburg Road Martinez, will present a marriage seminar Friday and Saturday featuring Donnie Hilliard, a professor of biblical and family studies at Faulkner University in Montgomery, Ala.

Hilliard, who grew up in Columbia County, holds a doctorate in family studies from the University of Alabama.

"The seminars are designed to be enrichment seminars," Hilliard said. "I direct a program at the Cloverdale Center for Family Strengths here at Faulkner. We look at what is right with families and marriages instead of what is wrong with them.

"We put great emphasis on prevention."

The free seminar will have three sessions. The first, "The Rules and Tools for a Great Marriage," will deal with getting back to the basics.

The second session, which is for couples only, will talk about bedroom issues and how to affair-proof marriages.

The third installment is for young adults who are preparing for marriage.

"It is a difficult time right now with the economy and the war going on; couples are struggling," said the Rev. Scott Patterson, of Central Church of Christ:

"We are focusing on all these issues that couples generally have as problems in the relationship, with the hope that talking about them and working through them will lead to marriages being strengthened."